Voting in Committees

Voting is also conducted in the Main Committees of the General Assembly. Although preliminary in character, this information might be of interest to researchers following each stage of the voting process. Committee voting information can be found in the meeting records of the Committees as well as in the reports which the Committees submit to the plenary on each agenda item allocated to them.

Official Record

The official record of a vote is found in the meeting record of the General Assembly.

Excerpts from the official record of the 49th plenary meeting of the General Assembly at its 52nd session, Wednesday, 12 November 1997, 3 p.m. (A/52/PV.49, p. 20)

The President: I shall now put to the vote draft resolution A/52/L.13 as a whole.

Draft resolution A/52/L.13 as a whole was adopted by 151 votes to 1, with 5 abstentions (resolution 52/11).

[Subsequently, the delegations of Nicaragua and Uganda informed the Secretariat that they had intended to vote in favour.]

The President: I shall now call on those representatives who wish to speak in explanation of vote. I should like to remind representatives that explanations of vote are limited to 10 minutes and should be made by delegations from their seats.

The information provided comes from the voting machine in the General Assembly Hall. If a Member State informs the Secretariat of an error in the vote, the data is not changed and the vote must therefore be researched in the meeting records.

The database uses the following notations to present the voting information:

Y = Yes

N = No

A = Abstentions

blank = Non-participating

9 = Not eligible to participate

Refers to countries which, according to Charter Article 19, cannot vote because the amount of their arrears equals or exceeds the amount of contributions due from them for the preceding two full years.

The database does not include information about votes on draft resolutions not adopted.